


Windchill

by obsidiangrey



Series: States 'Verse [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: FWP fluff without plot, Gen, I still don't know if I ship these two but I'll get back to you on it, fluffy fluff, massachusetts copes badly with the cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4259622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsidiangrey/pseuds/obsidiangrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cold outside, New York can't sleep, and Massachusetts can't stop shivering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Windchill

Massachusetts hated blizzards.

He laughed at his southern siblings when they pulled out their winter coats at 50°F (not Celsius, obviously, who even  _uses_ that), but that was more a matter of principle. He laughed on the numerous occasions that Pa would declare a boycott against winter and hide under a pile of hot water bottles and blankets until someone coaxed him out with the promise of hot food. He had once walked out to get the newspaper after a snowstorm (close to a foot of snow, temperatures in the low twenties) in only his boxers because he and New York were in a contest over who was more resistant to cold weather. (They were both sick for a week. Alaska didn't stop laughing for most of it.)

But dear  _God_ , did Massachusetts hate the winter and everything that came with it.

His earliest memories were of the merger between Plymouth and the Bay, way back before plumbing and proper heating and all those other nice things that made his current life a little easier. That merger was what caused him, as a personification, to pop into existence - at least, that was what he'd assumed this whole time. And after that, he remembered walking barefoot through the snow (and the slush, and the mud, and the grass, and the leaves, and the snow again-). He remembered walking barefoot until someone found him, and then he was  _warm_ , and it was that warmth and memory of comfort that Massachusetts counted as the best feeling in his whole life.

The winter nights were always long and cold and dark. The days were bright but not warm at all. When the land froze, it was like he could never get warm again. He  _hated_ winter, but worse than winter were the blizzards which tended to accompany it. The wind, the cold, the biting snow that rose up in drifts and seeped through the walls and the floor and the roof-

Dear God, he hated winter.

* * *

Winter in Vermont. There was more than three feet of snow on the ground, and the house was bright with Christmas lights. Miles to the south, a nor'easter was slamming into the coast.

New York shuffled around the house, Santa hat on his head and fuzzy dark blue pajamas and a pair of rabbit slippers. The lights which hung in the windows cast a faint warm glow over the house, bright enough to see by so he didn't need to turn more lights on but dim enough that he kept walking into things through his sleepy haze.

Winter wasn't  _so_ bad, he supposed, accidentally walking into the side of the couch, overbalancing and simultaneously deciding that he really didn't care by this point, and he let gravity drag him down to the cushions with a soft  _thwump_. "'s beginning to look a lot like Christmas," he sang, rather off-key, shifting into a more comfortable position and fishing his phone out of his pocket. "Laaaala-la da-da..." The phone buzzed in his hand. "News!"

His bouts of insomnia were unfortunate at best, but New York had learned how to cope. If he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, he would set his phone and laptop to alert him of any breaking news. It kept him from dying of boredom during his long stints of not-sleeping; currently, the screen on his phone said that most of Boston was without power, and the subways might flood if the weather kept up.

New York looked up at the ceiling. The Vermont house was toasty warm.

"Oh, the things that I do..." he grumbled after a very long pause, rolling off the couch and walking in the vague direction of the stairs, tripping over one of the tables which held a lamp on the way. He caught the light before it could crash onto the floor. "Gotta do something about the T, Pat, it's not getting any better."

Massachusetts' room was pitch black (normal), and the bed looked less like someone was sleeping there and more like a small mountain of blankets (less normal).

"Hey, Missie."

The reply was a faint sound like an upset cat (really not normal).

New York turned abruptly on his heel, leaving the door open behind him, and went straight back downstairs to the kitchen. He passed over the tea completely (it would get thrown at his face, probably, or possibly into the closest harbor) and tossed a pot on the stove to make hot chocolate. When he got back upstairs twenty minutes later and repeated his earlier words, he got the exact same reply.

"Come on, Patrick, there's a fireplace downstairs," he said, picking up both the other State and the mass of blankets and carrying them downstairs despite the indignant squawk which came out as a protest. "Multiple fireplaces, in fact. And hot chocolate."

"Go 'way, Steven."

"Not happening, Pat."

* * *

The great thing about the Vermont house (there were a lot of things, if he was being honest, but New York only had one particular thing in mind) was that he could see the times through which the building had gone through. The original house had been two stories high, with a big round table for meals, and gas lights on the walls, and candlesticks, and lots of fireplaces. The family had numbered about twenty, at that point, and the house had built in the years preceding the Civil War. Pa had insisted that they should compromise on their differences and try to get along- awful lot of good, that had done them.

The third floor had been added during the twenties, everyone giddy on the high of the people's excitement and the economic boom and the sheer relief that that  _awful_ war was over. They drank and laughed and partied, and the family got bigger, and New York was reasonably certain that in a drawer, somewhere in the house, was a picture of all the girls (and a couple of the guys) in flapper dresses.

Less than a decade later, the house drained out like a sink when the plug was pulled on the economy and the stock market crashed. The Great Depression stormed through, a twelve-year-old Washington living in Seattle's Hooverville, too poor to buy a train ticket back home and too stubborn to ask for the money. New York himself had been working almost twenty-four hours a day at that point in time, sending all the cash he could back to the house. If he wasn't going to sleep, he might as well make the best of his time, right? Massachusetts had been paddling a rowboat around Boston Harbor.

The basement had been extended and renovated. During the Second World War, a bomb shelter had been added. The States took matters into their own hands during America's paranoia stint of the 20th century and expanded the house to a fourth floor, an addition on the side, and more reinforcements for the bomb shelter. There was electric heating and electric lighting, and they went from radios to black-and-white television to television in color in the space of decades, but the floorboards in the main hallway were easily a foot wide and warped with age, remnants of the days when large trees were in abundance; there was tile in the kitchen; last year, Minnesota decided they needed new carpet and gotten some installed in the living room. Still, even after all of that, they had kept their fireplaces and still used them regularly, and New York tossed Massachusetts onto a couch before tossing some logs into the living room fireplace before getting tinder and striking a match. The room was instantly bathed in warm orange light, though Massachusetts still shivered.

"S'cold," he mumbled from somewhere under his blanket.

"You mentioned," New York replied dryly.

"Don't care."

New York went into the kitchen and poured two mugs of hot chocolate, eyeing his Massachusetts' favorite Celtics mug with distaste but not saying anything, then brought them back. "Try not to spill it."

"Nn."

Slowly, the Bay State unearthed himself from his blanket mound, a tousled head of hair appearing followed by a pair of shaky hands, and propped himself up enough to take the drink. New York went and flopped into his armchair with a sigh. The logs crackled in the hearth, and it was warm and peaceful. He was tired- tired, and not able to fall asleep, per normal.

"More?"

New York opened his eyes without realizing he'd closed them. Massachusetts was looking at him, holding out the now-empty mug.

"...Please?"

"God _damn_ , Missie, don't look at me like that! Snark at me or something. You look like a kicked puppy. Just stay put, I'll get more cocoa..."

* * *

 

Massachusetts hated blizzards. He had been caught outside in the winter far too many times for him to really enjoy the season anymore, having developed an abhorrence toward the cold, wet snow and the wind and the frigid temperatures.

Home, however, was warm and safe and something constant, and it was at home on the couch that he finally managed to fall asleep, not quite feeling as cold as he had before.

New York spied the other sleeping, blissfully unaware of the world as he slept, half-empty mug held in limp hands. He got up and set it on the table before it could spill, grabbed an extra blanket, and curled himself into a ball in his chair. "'Night, Pat." 

**Author's Note:**

> Steven --> New York  
> Patrick --> Massachusetts
> 
> I wrote this back during December in honor of that really terrible cold snap. -25°F and my school didn't send out a delay.
> 
> Historical Notes: There were two colonies which eventually became Massachusetts: Plymouth Colony (y'know, Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the "first Thanksgiving" that gets over-idealized, etc) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The two colonies eventually merged to become the Province of Massachusetts Bay when an English dude came over with a charter in 1692.
> 
> New York lives up to the nickname of New York City (the city that never sleeps). It's a big enough influence on his existence as a state that his insomnia gets pretty bad at times.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
